Most successful radio stations invest thousands of dollars researching the appeal of their music playlists. Painstaking hours are spent evaluating the test results of each and every song and deciding which songs will be played on the station and how often.

Most Program Directors wouldn’t think of playing a record with a 40% positive and 60% negative “I don’t care” score. But, when it comes to content on many morning shows, that is precisely the score most of it would get.

In too many radio stations, there is little, if any, real thought given to the percentage of listeners who will respond positively to proposed content on a morning show. That is because most morning shows have too few tangible filters in place to help them decide just what is “power” content.

There are a lot of generic “who is our audience and what do they care about” discussions in radio stations. But that type of thinking, while helpful to focus the show on general subjects, won’t really help you get more real power content on your morning show. We all know power content when we hear it.

One Program Director once described it as parking lot moments, or those times you are in your car at your destination and can’t get out until you hear the end of something on the radio because it is so compelling and unique. Power content is like a hit song you want to listen to over and over and never tire of hearing.

However, because most morning shows are operating on instincts alone, power content does not occur nearly as often as most Program Directors would like it to.

The first step to getting more power content on your radio station is to evaluate the content on your morning show. Here is a sample grading system:

A = Something that, if you don’t do it today, you
will have missed a topical, obvious opportunity.

B = Something that may not be topical, but it relates to or effects your listeners lives in a highly emotional or personal way.

C = Something that is interesting in a trivial way, but not topical or really even relevant to your listeners lives.

D = Something that is only interesting to the people on the show and has no relevancy to the lives and interests of the audience.

E = Something that 50% or more of your audience would be offended by or disagree with.

Now, there are some really edgy morning shows who might disagree with my description of E material.

However, if you really analyze even the edgiest morning radio show you will find that the successful ones do not offend a high percentage of their listeners. It’s usually the people who don’t listen who complain that they are offended.

The most effective way to improve the content grade of your morning show is to include the air personalities in the process. Explain the content grading system and allow the group to give input on how the content will be graded.

That helps them have ownership in the process and eases buy-in. Next, play a tape of the show, write the name of each set on a board and ask the talent to give each set a grade. Write each person’s grade next to the name of each set. Naturally, there may be some disagreement as to grades among the talent.

But usually, a clear, overall consensus forms. At the end of the session, you will be able to give the show an overall power content grade. If your show is a C or below, you have got a lot of work to do to shift the show prep thinking of your morning show.

The two biggest causes of low power content grades are misuse of the internet and outside show prep sources. The internet can be a great thing if it is used to research more information on A and B topics.

But, too many air personalities spend hours searching for weird stories that happen somewhere no one in the market cares about, offbeat surveys on unrelateble subjects and other C material. Most show prep services are filled with useless almanac and birthday information, weak one-line jokes and embarrassing, simplistic parody songs.

The keys to improving your content grade in morning drive are employing more topical and audience relevant content and improving the presentation of that content. It is not just the content that improves a radio morning show’s power content grade. It is also the creativity of content treatment.

Here is an exercise to help you and your morning show find more creative ways to execute your A and B material and create more compelling content. It is called “Add A Detail” and works like this: at your next morning show meeting, have the group shout out everything the audience is thinking and talking about and write them all down on a board or big piece of paper.

Then pick one of the things on the board at a time and begin to play the game. Let’s say one of the things on your board is extreme heat. The first person has to add a detail to “extreme heat” such as “no air conditioning.” Then, the next person has to add another detail to “extreme heat with no air conditioning” and that person might add “in a car.” It would then go to the third person who might add “the things they do to stay cool.” Keep going until the room runs out of ideas.

The outcome of this particular exercise could be a future on-air discussion of the weird things you see people without air conditioning in their cars do to survive the heat and/or suggestions from listeners on the best ways to stay cool without AC in the car.

This type of playful creativity is not only fun for the morning show, it is also an effective, efficient way to create more consistent power content.

For more ideas to help your morning show improve its content grade and create more consistent, compelling power content, contact Ozmon Media at (480) 342-8655.